Trees

Binary Trees and Binary

Search Trees

Part I
Lecture Flow
1. Prerequisites
2. Real life problem
3. Definition
4. Tree Terminologies
5. Types of Trees
6. Tree Traversal
7. Checkpoint
8. Basic BST Operations
9. Time and space complexity analysis
10. Things to pay attention to(common pi alls)
11. Applications of a Tree
12. Practice Questions
2
Pre-requisites
● Basic Recursion
● Linked List
● Stacks
● Queues

3
Real-Life Problem
What data structure will be best to implement a file management system ?

4
Real-Life Problem
What about linked-lists? Why?

But a directory can contain multiple directories and/or files.

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Real-Life Problem
So a linked list with multiple ‘next nodes’?

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What are Trees?

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Definition
● A hierarchical, non-linear data structure composed of zero or more
nodes.
● Why the name tree? Such data structure branches out starting from the
root, pretty much like the trees around us but upside down.

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Terminologies in Trees

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Terminology - Node
● A data structure that contains a value, a condition or a data structure
(yes even trees)
● In trees, a node can have 0 or more children but at most one parent.

1 class Node:
def __init__(self, key:int):
self.left = None
2 3 self.right = None
self.val = key

4 5
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Terminology - Parent
● A node is called parent node to the nodes it’s pointers point to.

2 3

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Terminologies - Child, Siblings
● The nodes a node’s pointers point to are called child nodes of that node.
● Siblings: nodes that have the same parent node.

2 3

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Terminology - Edge
● Edge: a connection between a child and parent node.

2 3

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Terminology - Root Node
● A node with no parent is called a root node.

2 3

4 5

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Terminology - Inner Node
● A node with the parent and the child is called an inner node or internal
node

2 3

4 5

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Terminology - Leaf Node
● A node with no children

2 3

4 5
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Terminology - Ancestor
● A node is called the ancestor of another node if it is the parent of the
node or the ancestor of its parent node.
● In simpler terms, A is an ancestor of B if it is B’s parent node, or the
parent of B’s parent node or the parent of the parent of B’s parent node
and so on.
1

2 3

4 5 17
Terminology - Descendant
● A node A is called the descendant of another node B if B is the ancestor
of A.
● In simpler terms, A is a descendant of B if A is the child node of B, or the
child of the child node of B or the child of child of the child node of B
and so on.
1

2 3

4 5
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Terminology - Sub-tree
● A subtree of a tree consists of a node n and all of the descendants of node n.

1 1 1

2 3 2 3 2 3

4 5 4 5 4 5
1 1

2 3 2 3

4 5 4 5
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Terminology - Level, Height and Depth
● The level of a tree indicates how far you are from the root
● The height of a tree indicates how far you are from the farthest leaf
● The depth of the node is the total number of edges from the root to the
current node. Level = depth + 1

1 Level 1 Height 2 Depth 0

2 3 Level 2 Height 1 Depth 1

4 5 Level 3 Height 0 Depth 2 20

Terminologies - Summary

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Types of Trees

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Types
Depending on the number of children of every node, trees are generally classified
as
1. Binary tree: Every node has at most two children
2. n-ary tree: Every node has at most n children
Binary trees 3-ary trees ( a.k.a, Ternary Trees)

1 1

2 3 6
2 3

4 5 5
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Types - Implementation

Binary tree N-ary tree

class Node:
class Node:
def __init__(self, key:int):
def __init__(self, key:int):
self.left = None
self.val = key
self.right = None
self.children = []
self.val = key
# len(children) <= N

Note: the N-ary tree implementation can be used for binary trees if
len(self.children) <= 2

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Types - Binary Trees
A binary tree is a tree in which every internal node and root node has at most two children.
These two child nodes are often called the left child node or right child node of the node.

Binary trees

2 3

4 5

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Types - Full Binary Trees
● A full binary tree is a special type of binary tree where each node has 0 or 2
children
Full Binary tree Not a Full Binary tree

1 1

2 3 2 3

4 5 4 5 6

10 11 8 10 11
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Types - Complete Binary Trees
● A complete binary tree is a special type of binary tree where all the levels of
the tree are filled completely except the “lowest” level nodes which are filled
from as left as possible.

● A complete binary tree is just like a full binary tree, but with two major
differences
○ All the leaf elements must lean towards the left.
○ The last leaf element might not have a right sibling i.e. a complete binary
tree doesn't have to be a full binary tree.

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Types - Complete Binary Trees

Complete Binary tree Not a Complete Binary tree

1 1

2 3 2 3

4 5 6 7 4 5

8 9 10 8 10 11

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Types - Perfect Binary Trees
● A perfect binary tree is a special type of binary tree in which all the leaf nodes
are at the same depth, and all non-leaf nodes have two children.

Perfect Binary tree

2 3

4 5 6 7

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Types - Balanced Binary Trees
● A balanced binary tree is defined as a binary tree in which the height of the left
and right subtree of any node differ by not more than 1.

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Types - Balanced Binary Trees

Balanced Binary tree Not a Balanced Binary tree

1
1

2 3
2 3

4 5 6
4 5

10
8 10

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Types - Binary Search Trees
● A binary search tree is a binary tree that has the following properties:

○ The left subtree of the node only contains values less than the value of the node.
○ The right subtree of the node only contains values greater than or equal to the value of
the node.
○ The left and right subtrees of the nodes should also be the binary search trees.

4 4

2 6 2 6

1 3 7 7
1 3
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Types - Binary Search Trees
● Why binary search trees? Efficient search, insert and delete.
● Applications
○ Sorting large datasets
○ Maintaining sorted stream
○ Implementing dictionaries and priority queues

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Tree Traversal

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Tree Traversal
● Traversing a tree means visiting every value. Why would you need to do that?

○ To determine the a certain statistic, such as extrememum value or

average over all values

○ To sort the values

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Tree Traversal - Depth First Search
● Depth-first search (DFS) is a method for exploring a tree or graph.
● In a DFS, you go as deep as possible down one path before backing up and
trying a different one. You explore one path, hit a dead end, and go back and
try a different one.
● There are basically three ways of traversing a binary tree:
1. Preorder Traversal
2. Inorder Traversal
3. Postorder Traversal

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Depth First Search - Preorder
● In preorder traversal, we recursively traverse the parent node first, then the left
subtree of the node, and finally, the node’s right subtree.

● Problem Link

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Depth First Search - Inorder
● In inorder traversal, we traverse the left subtree first, then the the parent node
and finally, the node’s right subtree.
● Inorder traversal in BST results in a sorted order of the values

Problem Link

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Depth First Search - Postorder
● In inorder traversal, we traverse the left subtree first, then the the right subtree
of, and finally, the parent node.

Problem Link

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Depth First Search - Example

Preorder:
1

2 3 Inorder:

4 5 6
Postorder:

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Depth First Search - Example

Preorder: 1 2 4 5 0 3 6
1

2 3 Inorder: 4 2 0 5 1 6 3

4 5 6
Postorder: 4 0 5 2 6 3 1

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Checkpoint
link

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Practice Problem
Link

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